The present invention relates to methods and systems for simulating interactions between a user and a computer. In particular, the present invention relates to methods and systems for testing a system that provides speech services.
A speech server can be utilized to combine Internet technologies, speech-processing services, and telephony capabilities into a single, integrated system. The server can enable companies to unify their Internet and telephony infrastructure, and extend existing or new applications for speech-enabled access from telephones, mobile phones, pocket PCs and smart phones.
Applications from a broad variety of industries can be speech-enabled using a speech server. For example, the applications include contact center self-service applications such as call routing and customer account/personal information access. Other contact center speech-enabled applications are possible including travel reservations, financial and stock applications and customer relationship management. Additionally, information technology groups can benefit from speech-enabled applications in the areas of sales and field-service automation, E-commerce, auto-attendants, help desk password reset applications and speech-enabled network management, for example.
While these speech-enabled applications are particularly useful, the applications can be prone to errors resulting from a number of different situations. For example, the errors can relate to speech recognition, call control latency, insufficient capacity and/or combinations of these and other situations. Different testing systems have been developed in order to analyze these applications. However, these test systems provide limited functionality and can require specialized hardware in order to interface with the speech server.